


honesty is the best policy

by thecourtjester



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, future vision induced moral quandraries, indrids weird and wonderful ways of sitting, this isnt my first fic but be kind to me anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecourtjester/pseuds/thecourtjester
Summary: A late-night conversation in a well-heated Winnebago.





	honesty is the best policy

**Author's Note:**

> havent written in ages, but here are the fruits of my recent labour. hope you like it.

It's a still, frozen night in the Monongahela National Forest. Most of the creatures that call these woods home have have nestled into their nooks and crannies to sleep out the winter, and the rivers are frozen over, arrested in their path, silent. The moon is barely a sliver, and the visibility is bad, but in a frost-encrusted Winnebago, the heater's on high, the television is loud, and two men, one chosen, one moth, are yelling _Louise Belcher_ with all the volume they can muster.

"Lisa Simpson," the man on the TV says, wincing even as he says it, and the buzzer blares a harsh _brrrp_.

Duck and Indrid groan in simultaneous frustration.

"Man, how can you stand these shows?" Duck laments, tone defeated. He really thought this guy was gonna win.

Indrid hums, and in his glasses Duck can see the reflection of the TV as the contestant puts his head in his hands. "I'm a sucker for punishment, I suppose. Plus, it's usually either this or reruns of Dr Phil."

Duck grimaces. "Yeah, that shit's painful even for me."

"Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, English musician, singer, and songwriter, is better known by which moniker?"

Indrid sighs. "I never know the music ones."

"Dude, that's Sting!"

Indrid raises a judgemental eyebrow. "Sting?" He says, with no small amount of disdain.

"Sting," the next contestant beams.

"From The Police? You gotta know Sting."

Indrid shrugs as the shrill got-that-right bell rings. Duck winces. Indrid reaches for the remote, and kindly mutes it. "Enough trivia, maybe."

Duck sighs. "Yeah, fair enough. It's late."

"Do you need to go?"

Indrid doesn't look at him when he says it, studying the remote in a way that's a little too self-conscious to be casual. Indrid does this, Duck's noticed - he won't say what he wants, won't outright ask him to stay, but instead leaves little breadcrumbs that someone might follow to the truth. It's the basis of his best theory for why Indrid doesn't seem to have a social life to speak of; he expects everyone else to be as good at picking up signals as he is. It makes a sad kind of sense that such an abstracted life might be lonely.

"Nah," Duck replies. He'll drink an extra coffee in the morning.

They lapse into silence. Indrid seems constantly preoccupied, and Duck likes to watch him. Not outright staring, mind you - Duck's still got some social graces - but just... sneaking glances. Wondering what's going on in there.

"You have visions, Duck." Indrid still isn't looking at him, just staring into nothing. Well, probably not nothing. Nothing that Duck can see.

"Yep." Duck shifts, a little uncomfortable. It's fine. Indrid would know his couch isn't the best, no matter how many pillows and blankets he piles onto it. Duck has no idea where he fits them all, because most of them aren't there when Ned and Aubrey are around.

"Do you ever see something you can act on, but wonder if it's really right to do so?"

Duck frowns. "I mean, not really? Most of my visions are pretty terrible. Only one way to feel about them, y'know?"

Indrid sighs. It's a little heavy. Inching towards melodramatic, even. "I understand, Duck, my apologies."

He reaches for the glass on the table, and takes a long swig. Duck tries not to be put off - after the third or fourth time he'd swung round to watch late night game shows, the mere thought of eggnog was enough to make him feel sick.

"I can listen, though? Give some advice, if I'm able. You can talk to me, you know," Duck offers. It comes from the same instinct that drives him out here in the first place, the same instinct that won't let him sleep unless he knows his cat is safe inside. Duck's never liked seeing anything hurting.

"Yes," Indrid says, slowly, like he's making the decision as he goes. "Yes, actually, that'd be nice."

Duck reshuffles himself, settling in, so that he's facing Indrid more than he isn't. Indrid's a little crumpled up, one leg bent at an angle Duck couldn't make if he tried, leaning against the arm of the couch, and the other's strung out somewhere beneath the blankets. His back is curved into a similarly awkward-looking forward slouch, but then, it usually is. Maybe he's just more comfortable like that; Duck can't really imagine it.

"Say..." Indrid takes another audible gulp of nog. "Say you knew that something you did or didn't do would change the likelihood of certain events."

Duck nods. He doesn't really get it, but he feels like the explanation is incoming.

"For example, you... you knew that if you struck up a conversation with someone, strung it out too long, they'd be late to work, and tomorrow all the milk would be on special. Does that make sense?"

"I...guess. Get the feeling this isn't so much about avoiding full-price milk, though."

Indrid smiles, looking over at Duck kind of sideways, head tilted. "Stick with the metaphor, Duck, if you will."

"Okay, fair," Duck shrugs. "I guess do it, then. Doesn't seem too bad."

"What if the person you made late would get fired?"

Duck grimaces. "Don't do that. Times are tough."

"Yes, it's about the pros and cons. You weigh them up, and act accordingly. Now, what if it was more ambiguous?" Indrid slings their arm over the back of the couch, and his leg swings down towards you, still at that painful-looking angle. "What if you knew how to change someone's mind? Get them to vote differently, or agree with you on something? What if you know the _exact_ right course of events to influence that decision?"

Duck shakes his head. "That-"

"Seems a little too far," they say in tandem, and Indrid nods his head, quick, just this side of frantic. "Yes, it does. It does. But what do you do, in that moment? Do you act in the way that favours you? What if there's only two choices, and neither or them will ultimately be better or worse?"

"Indrid, man," Duck says, swiping a hand across his face. "I'll be honest, I just barely made it through college, and I definitely didn't major in philosophy. I'd love to help, but... I really don't think this is my area of expertise, so to speak."

Indrid leans back, a little. He seems to have lost some of the energy he was building up, but Duck doesn't really know if that's good or bad.

Silence, again. Duck wonders if maybe he's fucked up.

"How's this, then?" Indrid says. "If it was you that my visions were about, you whose mind I could change, what would you want?"

" _Me_?"

"You're the closest thing I have to a non-seer's perspective, so, yes."

"Uhh..." Duck casts around for the right response. _Depends on the vision,_ he thinks, but surely he can do better than that. _Don't change my mind_? But Duck can think of at least three scenarios where that's the wrong choice. He thinks about it - really thinks - and in the end, what comes out is about as laughable an attempt at advice as he's ever given.

"Honesty is the best policy?" He tries, cringing even as he says it, offering up an embarrassed shrug as sort of a garnish to this very unappetising bowl of cheese.

Indrid doesn't laugh. Duck feels even worse.

Instead, he just stares. He stares intently, and for really a very long time. So long, actually, that Duck's knee starts to hurt in that you're-too-old-to-keep-this-joint-in-this-position-for-this-long kind of way.

Then he gets up, without a word, pulls open a drawer in the kitchen, and rifles through some papers, pulling out a stack of a dozen or more, and hands them to Duck as he sits back down.

(He folds both his legs up, this time, and strings his arms across them while he rests his chin on his knees. Duck has no idea how that could possibly be comfortable.)

Predictably, they're drawings. Less predictably, they're of Duck, or at least the first one is. It's strange to look at - one of Duck's exes used to draw him, but it was always a little off. He was too skinny, or too handsome, or just not scruffy enough to feel real. The Duck on the page, though, the Duck that Indrid's drawn, looks exactly like him, right down to the panicked, deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face. Drawing-Duck's anxiety is tangible - it's almost stressful to look at it.

He picks that one up, puts it down atop a crest in the blanket between him and Indrid to look at the next. And, immediately, Duck does a double take. "Woah," he croaks.

They're in a car - the background isn't well defined, but he can tell that much. Duck's in the driver's seat, and Indrid's riding shotgun, and... They're not kissing, but either they're just about to or they've just broken apart, because they're barely an inch away from each other, all eyes closed. Indrid's holding on to one side of Duck's jacket. Duck's got his hands in Indrid's hair. It's... kind of heated, all things considered.

"Honesty is the best policy, right?" Indrid says, voice uncharacteristically small.

Duck looks up at him, open mouthed and stunned. "You've been seeing _this_?"

He nods, wordless.

"And-" Duck's only on the second picture. "There's more?"

He reaches for the top of the surface page, ready to look at the next, but Indrid clears his throat. "Actually, ah, the rest are really just more of the same. Some of them are a bit more, ah, explicit, so..." He reaches for them, and Duck is a little too stunned not to oblige.

Indrid clears his throat again, and frowns a little as he pushes at the edges of the stack, shifting them into a neatly aligned pile, and sets them down delicately on the coffee table.

He's nervous, which actually makes Duck feel a little bit better.

"None of it is certain, though," Indrid says, still gazing over the pile of drawings. "Just more or less likely."

"Is this more," Duck asks, hesitant, "or less?"

"It..." Indrid blinks. "Fluctuates."

"Right," Duck says. "Right." He's at a bit of a loss. What do you say when your new seer friend tells you he's seen the two of you making out? "I didn't know you were," he gestures, lamely, at the papers, "you know. Gay, or bisexual, or whatever."

Indrid turns his red-tinted eyes on Duck. "I find gender largely irrelevant," he says.

"Oh," Duck gulps.

"Is it relevant to you?"

"I mean, yes?" Aside from one or two dorm room flings, everyone he's dated, or even slept with, were women. He's definitely never hooked up with a guy while sober. "Mostly, anyway. Usually."

Indrid unfolds his legs, only to fold them up again criss-cross applesauce, one propped up against the back of the couch, the other hanging flat over the edge. Duck could never. "Would you prefer that future didn't happen?" He asks, picking at a thread in his sweatpants. _More breadcrumbs,_ Duck thinks.

"I don't- I don't really know," he says, and he doesn't.

Duck doesn't see any sense in pretending he doesn't find Indrid attractive. It isn't strictly friendly, but it isn't like he ever expected anything to come of it, or really even considered that something might. He'd kind of put it on the same shelf that he puts the objective attractiveness of anyone who isn't really in his age range or gender preference. Now that he's thinking about it, though, him and Indrid, what it would look like, what it would _feel_ like...

Duck swallows. "I don't know," he says again, because he's too old (and way too sober) to be thinking with his dick.

"Okay," Indrid says, and keeps picking. _He's gonna unravel the whole leg if he's not careful_ , Duck thinks, distantly. "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Sorry."

"No, it's... I'm glad I know. And I'm not, fuck, I'm not turning you down, or anything, just." Indrid's head snaps up, eyes intent. "Can we, maybe... See what happens?" Duck tries, and Indrid smiles, slow and pleased.

"See what happens," Indrid echoes, like he's turning the words around in his mouth to see how they taste. Trying them on for size. "Okay. I like that plan."

"And, hey," Duck says hastily, remembering the earlier conversation. "If any cheap milk scenarios come up, would you let me know?"

Indrid nods slowly. "I can do that. Diaporesis."

Duck blinks. "I'm sorry?"

"It's an old word," Indrid says, shrugging. "For being indecisive when faced with a choice."

"Oh. Alright, yeah. Just say dia- dia-"

"Diaporesis," Indrid smiles.

"Yeah, that." And Duck smiles back.

It's still freezing outside. The water's still frozen, the animals are still hibernating, and the heater in Indrid's Winnebago is still on blast. Duck will have to go home soon - and, man, maybe he'll stop off at Leo's on the way to work to pick up something more caffeinated - and Indrid will be alone with his visions and drawings again.

Until the next time Duck trundles his way up to Indrid's door. Tonight, for now, that's good enough for them.

**Author's Note:**

> gordan summers aka stang is my third favourite monster factory creation. when that question came up on a trivia generator, i just couldnt resist.
> 
> i have a sequel already in the works, so to quote our dungeon master, best friend, and midnight boy - trust me, i wont let that go too unresolved :)


End file.
